The State Press: ASU Spent Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Lobbying California's State Legislature
"To ensure that California students enrolled in ASU programs in California can receive federal financial aid, we have supported two bills this year, (Assembly Bill) AB 2341 and (Senate Bill) SB 1433, which would establish processes to obtain that authorization and give more California students access to affordable higher education in their home state," ASU spokesperson Veronica Sanchez wrote in an email to The State Press.
This authorization is overseen by the state's Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education. California lawmakers, including SB 1433's sponsor Sen. Richard Roth, said they have never seen a public university from a different state create a campus offering educational opportunities in California.
"In trying to fit that sort of public institution into the Bureau of Private and Postsecondary Education framework, we wanted to make sure as legislators that we did so in a way that we're setting precedent," Roth said in an interview. "It would work for ASU, it would work for others in the future."